Bryce Davies: AMI, State, and NZI Climate Spokesperson on weather based claims spiking 256%

Insurance companies are getting very specific when assessing which properties are exposed to risks like flooding, an insurance expert says, but there’s a limit. 

An intense storm like the one that hit some Wellington suburbs yesterday could have happened anywhere, making the risk much harder to pin down to individual properties, Bryce Davies —climate spokesperson for AMI, State, and NZI— told Mike Hosking. 

If people didn’t address the risks to their properties from flooding and wind damage it would “absolutely” have an impact on their insurance premiums, he said. 

Insurers would also be increasingly focused on perils like landslips in the coming years. 

But Davies said AMI, State, and NZI weren’t making blanket decisions to pull insurance from some areas. 

“We’re here to insure people…that’s our business and so we’re focused on making sure that we can do that.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What do you reckons happening to our insurance given the weather. Well,
we've had forty six forty six weather events between autumn
last year and summer of this year. Thirty three thousand,
one hundred and seventy two claims up two hundred and
fifty six percent, which, if you quickly did the mats
is a storm every eight days. Bryce Davies, as the
AMI State and ends adized climate spokesperson.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Is with us.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Morning.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Good monk.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Here, I suppose being a climate spokesperson for a bunch
of insurance companies, You've never been busier. This is your time,
time to shine.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
It's at a very busy time. We're saying so much,
so many storms of late that. Yes, there's lots to
focus on.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Thirty three one hundred and seventy two claims. What I'm
more interested in, though, is the actual dollars. Are you
paying out a fortune?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah? We you know, with the claims, obviously come comes
a cost and we plan for that cost. But yeah,
it's it's it's it's increasing.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah. What I'm trying to find out though, it's all
very well to say, look this thirty three thousand claims,
but if they're all for pop plants that fell off
the wall. That's not the same as having your house flooded.
So are you materially paying out a fortune? And all
of this is going to come back to my letterbox
when my premium goes up.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, mike your premium, if you're a typical homeowner, your
premium abolt six obercent of your premium is going to
be related to natural hazards and that shows up as
claims costs, that shows up as reinsurance costs and taxes
and levies in terms of the NHR premium. So as
we see more of these storms come through, we see
more damage and it's typically you know when damage it

(01:32):
is flooding. Then if you don't actually address that level
of risk, it's going to have an impact on your premiums. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
What's happening with you with reinsurance? Are they looking at
New Zealand are ghasted at the moment or not?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Well, they after the storms in twenty twenty three, they
took another look at New Zealand. They weren't really expecting
us to have as large as storms as we did
with Gabrielle and Auckland flooding, So that adjustment's taking place
I met nationally. You know what they call secondary perils,
which simply means you know, floods and storms to you
and me. So they had a look at that, they

(02:08):
noticed that that was changing, and they've reflected that and
what we pay and then an insurance we get.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
So that's all we kind of And is that an
ongoing process. I mean, like Wellington yesterday, I mean, what
a freak storm that was. I mean, Wellington doesn't get
that well, but now seemingly it does.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Yeah. Yeah, shocking, shocking with it down there. It's a
constant thing that just like we do every year, we
have to think about the risks that we face and
we factor that into the premiums we ask our customers
to pay. It's the same with reinsurance. So looking around
the world, they're seeing what's going on and they all
simply reflect that in their pricing.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
How specific is the coverage getting these days? How much
are you driolling into very detailed areas and going your
trouble versus one hundred meters down the road you're not.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah, that's a continuous process. So I think we said before, yes,
we're moving to a more risk based view of these
sorts of perils. It depends on the type of you're
talking about. If you're talking about a windstorm or heavy rain,
well that can happen anywhere, right, so that's difficult to
kind of pin that down to an individual property. But

(03:14):
if you're talking about something like flooding, which obviously can
come from that, then yeah, we can be really quite
specific about that. And then there's new perials that are
becoming a bit more important to us, you know, like
landslip and things like that, And again they can happen
in a whole variety of places, and that's something that well,
you know, you'll see Insurres focus on more and more
over coming years.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
How crunchy is the whole discussion, and by that I
mean you guys exiting or you guys pricing people out
of the market, versus the government potentially getting involved and
were ending up like America with a large number of
people simply not able to afford insurance.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Yeah. Look, I've been in this game for a while,
so I've noticed that conversation increasing year on year on year.
You know, from from our perspective from AMI State ins
that I you know, we're here to ensure people, so
we're not making any of those kind of blanket decisions
about playing out. We want to be here, we want
to ensure people. That's our business, and so we're focused
on making sure that we can do that.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
All right, RUS appreciate it. Bryce Dabies out of Ami
State and in jud I. For more from the Mic
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